Privacy Protection Technology in Supply Chain-oriented Blockchain

The supply chain refers to the process that starts from the production of parts, goes through transportation, storage and other processes, and finally forms products and sells them. The supply chain generally consists of suppliers, manufacturers, sales companies, consumers and other elements. With the increase in the scale of the supply chain and the increase in transactions, it becomes difficult to track the transportation process of goods, and the transaction reliability is low, which leads to problems such as low logistics and transportation efficiency, difficulty in market supervision, and difficulty in confirming the ownership of goods. Therefore, we need a means to informatize the supply chain. Blockchain consists of blocks containing information connected in chronological order. Compared with traditional networks, blockchain has two core characteristics: one is the immutability of data, and the other is decentralization. Its structure naturally fit the characteristics and development trend of the supply chain, so we can consider using blockchain technology to solve the problems in the supply chain, so as to realize the innovative development of the supply chain.

Our article first gives the concrete scheme of applying blockchain technology to supply chains. From the four aspects of data collection, uploading, storage and use, we discussed how those various blockchain privacy protection technologies protect and enhance data privacy in the supply chain, including public key cryptography, digital signature, secret sharing technology, threshold cryptography, access control, and secure multi-party computation. We also predict the possible development direction of blockchain technology which is applied to supply chain.